UNDRIP Report - English FINAL - International Forum on Globalization

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open up and expand exports to serve the U.S. market, Menotti stated. Another consideration is that indigenous peoples’ stolen lands supply much of the soy, timber and gold that are being harvested and exported. Like slavery, stolen property should be considered an illegal subsidy under trade rules. All products must be verified as originating from legal sources, Menotti asserted, which is one reason for expanding enforcement of the US Lacey Act. In Canada, First Nations examined the timber industry to document its production of goods from stolen land. Such subsidies enable Canada to export timber at onethird the price of U.S. timber. Menotti explained that these First Nations groups submitted an Amicus [Curiae] brief to the WTO and to the USTR arguing for prior rights to the land and resources, and demanding to be compensated for them. They may demand the same for Canada’s energy exports to the US. Sharing such strategic arguments as “stolen lands are subsidies” could strengthen groups protesting soy and ethanol expansion in Brazil. He concluded that this is why there is a need for increased communication between the biofuels communities and the trade communities and also between U.S., Brazilian and European activists. Menotti believes that while there is a lot of good work happening to fight the expansion of biofuels, we are not ready for Brazil’s push to increase exports to European and American markets by suing for it under the WTO. <strong>UNDRIP</strong> could be a useful instrument to apply to the global biofuels trade. Leila Salazar-Lopez of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) told the group that one of the biggest threats to the tropical rainforests and indigenous peoples throughout the world is the expansion of the global biofuels trade. From the heart of the Amazon to the heart of Borneo, biofuels trade is expanding and indigenous peoples are being displaced as a result. Their land is being cleared and burned to make way for soy, sugar, and palm plantations, she explained. Salazar-Lopez explained that, “Palm oil can be up to ten times worse than fossil fuels when you take into account the whole energy lifecycle: clearing and burning rainforests, draining peat lands, using petroleum-based fertilizers, transporting it halfway around the world, and processing it. It is not a positive solution for climate change.” RAN prefers to use the term “agrofuels” because the “bio” in “biofuels” means “life” and there is nothing life sustaining about “crops that are displacing people, that are wrecking the environment, and polluting indigenous peoples’ lands with Monsanto’s pesticides,” Salazar-Lopez said. Large landowners and corporations are buying land and dividing communities. Governments are dividing communities as well. Indigenous peoples are losing their food sovereignty as they lose their rights to hunt and fish and to practice their traditional way of life because of agrofuel expansion, Salazar-Lopez explained. It is ironic that agrofuels are promoted as alternatives to fossil fuels, as a way to reduce our global greenhouse emissions and so that we can have energy independence. That might be true for some agrofuels at the end of our tailpipes, but that is not true for the environment overall, or for our energy independence, Salazar-Lopez believes. “Agrofuels are a false solution to reducing emissions and to gaining energy independence,” said Salazar-Lopez. The burning and clearing of rainforests and peat lands in Indonesia and Brazil is the reason why these countries are the third and fourth global greenhouse emitters, right behind the U.S. and China,” Salazar- Lopez declared. Palm oil expansion in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, along with soy expansion, are two areas that RAN focuses on most. Palm oil is used for cooking oil, detergent, cosmetics, and snack foods, but the expansion of palm oil is for agrofuels, she explained. That is because there is an increased demand in Europe and the U.S. for agrofuels, due to mandated increases in consumption for renewable fuels. Salazar-Lopez said that ninety-nine percent of the palm oil that comes to the United States is from Malaysia and Indonesia, of which eighty-seven percent comes from Malaysia and thirteen percent comes from Indonesia. The expansion however, is really happening in Indonesia, she added. In Indonesia, 20 million hectares have already been cleared for palm oil plantations, she told the group. However, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) found that only 6 million hectares have actually been planted. This is because the timber industry and the palm oil industry are working hand in hand, she explained. The Indonesian government is on a “fast track” to give out leases and concessions to palm oil 21
plantations, due to the increase in the global demand, even though 14 thousand hectares of land already cleared for palm oil plantations have not yet been planted. Salazar-Lopez suggested that a moratorium should be placed on agrofuel expansion because it is a false solution to climate change. The Palm Oil mega-project could displace up to 1.4 million people in Malaysia and up to 5 million people in Indonesia, according to Sawit Watch, an Indonesian network against oil palm plantations. Sawit Watch’s report, which was submitted to the UN Convention on Racial Equality, reveals that the project’s massive plantation is to be built on the border of Malaysia, between Indonesia and Sarawak, in the midst of a mountainous tropical rainforest. The Malaysian palm oil industry is convincing the state of Hawaii to replace its diesel refineries with biodiesel refineries. The idea is to replace fossil fuel depleting refineries with refineries that use an “alternative energy” and, in effect, reduce Hawaii’s emissions. However, Salazar-Lopez pointed out that the source of the seed stock for the biofuels would be from Malaysian palm oil. Cargill would provide the seeds. Salazar-Lopez explained that there is resistance against the biodiesel refineries from local indigenous communities in Hawaii, as well as from the Sierra Club, NRDC, Environmental Defense, Rainforest Action Network and Land is Life (a local community group). Salazar-Lopez said RAN will ask an ally of theirs to accompany them to the shareholder meeting of soy giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to tell ADM directly about the concerns surrounding the expansion of agrofuels. The Malaysian palm oil plantations are also promoting their model in the Amazon, Salazar-Lopez said. Of all the threats to the rainforest from cattle ranching and agrobusiness, soy is currently the biggest. She explained that the Malaysian palm oil industry recently proposed that a 100,000-hectare palm oil plantation be built in the Amazon. This is being proposed as a project under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. The land is currently degraded, she said, so the industry is proposing green cover on the plantation land, in order to offset emissions. Mato Grosso, Brazil is the soy capital of the world and has the largest tropical savannah on the planet, eighty percent of which has been destroyed because of soy plantations, Salazar- Lopez explained. She said that soy production has recently expanded north. In Santarém (in the middle of the Amazon), a Cargill plant was built in 2002 and since then deforestation has doubled. In the U.S., Salazar-Lopez concluded, we need to look at our renewable fuel standards, which aim to increase agrofuel production by 36 billion gallons. She explained that this would subsidize and promote the ethanol industry and displace soy as a result, which would then be expanded on in the Amazon. In August 2008 in Mato Grosso alone, the rate of deforestation increased by 288 percent, Salazar- Lopez stated. “This is a good example of how our domestic energy policies affect other countries and their energy policies as well,” said Salazar-Lopez. Trevor Stevenson spoke of how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has affected the indigenous peoples of Mexico. When NAFTA passed, it included some clear provisions that would change the Constitution of Mexico by allowing indigenous communal property called ejidos to be privatized. NAFTA made it possible for ejidos to be lost via parcelization, renting, leasing, and other forms of privatization, Stevenson explained. Trade liberalization concerned a group of people in the state of Chiapas called the Zapatistas. The group took that name because during the Mexican Revolution, the followers of Emiliano Zapata fought to establish communal property rights, Stevenson explained. He mentioned that this small Zapatista region in Mexico manages its autonomy, but the rest of Mexico does not, and they have been “hit pretty hard by NAFTA.” The indigenous peoples outside of Zapatista territory have lost control over more than half of their land over the fifteen-year span of NAFTA, Stevenson stated. Corn trade has also undermined communities, and most Mexicans now eat U.S. corn and are unable to sell locally grown corn. “This is one of the reasons that we see a massive increase in immigration from Mexico to the U.S.,” said Stevenson. A large majority of Mexican immigration over the past decade has been by indigenous peoples. “For the indigenous peoples in Mexico, NAFTA has been an absolute disaster,” Stevenson believes. The Amazon Alliance tried to inform indigenous communities in Peru about the US–Peru Free Trade Agreement. Their campaign proved unsuccessful, as the communities were unclear about how the agreement would affect them and they had other pressing priorities, so they decided to focus their 22
Page 1 and 2: [Strategy Session] IMPLEMENTING THE
Page 3 and 4: [ S U M M A R Y R E P O R T ] I M P
Page 5 and 6: INT ROD UCT IO N Victor Menotti of
Page 7 and 8: determine the Alliance’s prioriti
Page 9 and 10: spiritual practices that are not bu
Page 11 and 12: Discussion Trevor Stevenson of the
Page 13 and 14: utilize members of the indigenous S
Page 15 and 16: their rights had been violated when
Page 17 and 18: their climate change impact, and ar
Page 19 and 20: change conference in Bali, Indonesi
Page 21 and 22: concerns and explaining why they we
Page 23: wondered. She also pointed out that
Page 27 and 28: indigenous peoples take up to prote
Page 29 and 30: many times that they can shut down
Page 31 and 32: implementation of the different pro
Page 33 and 34: implementation of UNDRIP</s
Page 35 and 36: and indigenous issues.” He told t
Page 37 and 38: Indigenous peoples also took part i
Page 39 and 40: Secondly, Ole Simel made the point
Page 41 and 42: evaluating CDM, then projects would
Page 43 and 44: measure, would never be able to do
Page 45 and 46: Jintiach finished by saying that al
Page 47 and 48: industry, and about twenty percent
Page 49 and 50: discussion came up in Accra, and th
Page 51 and 52: end he was challenged on whether No
Page 53 and 54: to be very attentive to the argumen
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Page 57 and 58: could [potentially] generate $50 bi
Page 59 and 60: Discussion Athena Ballesteros of th
Page 61 and 62: change and by which they are mitiga
Page 63 and 64: In response to Tom Goldtooth’s st
Page 65 and 66: although the IFIP can be a champion
Page 67 and 68: their lands and natural resources.
Page 69 and 70: lawyers who work pro-bono in ”dev
Page 71 and 72: that if it takes a network for this
Page 73 and 74: indigenous delegation and articulat
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Aaron Goldzimer of the Environmenta
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what they were doing was trying to
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participants to coordinate with oth
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LIST OF PA RTICI PA N TS Brazil Ms.
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United States Mr. David Gordon Paci
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UNI TED NA TI ON S DE CL AR A TI ON
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Recognizing that the situation of i
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histories and aspirations which sha
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2. Unless otherwise freely agreed u
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Article 42! The United Nations, its
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